But pre-set expectations and testing questions make us wonder about our results.

says manufacturer AudioQuest. "For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player.""/>

Enlarge/ Close-up of the AudioQuest Vodka Ethernet cable. Note the arrow on the connector. "All audio cables are directional," says manufacturer AudioQuest. "For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player."

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Update, 7/31/15:We've published the results of the our cable analyzer test on the Audioquest Vodka, courtesy of Kurt Denke at Blue Jeans Cable. Those serve as a complement to our feature, which appears in full below.

"Vegas again," I thought, as the noisy A320 plonked down onto the runway at McCarran. I was in the front, thanks to a plethora of reward miles on United, and across the row through the portal I could see the Vegas Strip—hungry, pulsing. It was only a few months since I'd last been here for CES, and coming back to the city felt a lot like putting back on that dirty, comfortable sweater you just can't seem to bring yourself to throw away.

Further Reading

But this time I wasn't here to report on gadgets or meet vendors or anything else quite like I'd done before—this time, I was going up on stage myself. After calling out the audiophile cable gods, I'd come to settle the score. I'd brought a $340 "audiophile grade" Ethernet cable, and I was ready to put it to the test with the assistance of the James Randi Educational Foundation in front of a live audience of several hundred people.

My room was waiting for me at the Mandalay Bay hotel—the very first place I'd ever stayed in Vegas on my very first conference back in 2003 and the place that always springs to mind before anything else when I think of the city. After taxiing to the lobby, the place even smelled the same: fresh, in a vaguely artificial floral way. I'd sleep, and then I'd sing and dance up on stage. The goal was to find out if a $340 Ethernet cable made any difference when you're using it to connect a computer to a NAS on which music was stored. To all common sense and science, the answer was "no," but that hasn't stopped a certain subset of audiophiles from believing in them—and from other silliness like decrying the efficacy of the scientific method when it comes to audio testing.

Did it or didn't it

Let’s get this out of the way first: the overwhelming majority of subjects could not tell the difference between a $350 AudioQuest Vodka Ethernet cable and a $2.50 "Cable Matters" cable from Amazon under our specific testing conditions. I don’t think anyone was expecting anything different from this test, including the true believer audiophile set. However, it’s possible that our test didn't account for some variables—which means, at worst, our results aren’t broadly applicable.

Let’s backtrack, though, and set the stage here before we dive into how it all went down. As we noted last week, this all happened at the James Randi Educational Foundation’s "The Amazing Meeting" conference in Las Vegas. The claim being examined was that when connected between a computer and an Ethernet switch while listening to music hosted on a NAS, the cables produce changes to the quality of music that are, in the words of reviewer Michael Lavorgna, "not subtle or slight" and "as plain as day."

Ars partnered with the James Randi Educational Foundation to test the cables on the basis of the JREF’s long history of conducting controlled tests with clearly defined methods and protocols on supposedly otherworldly phenomena. Famously, Randi and his team have been instrumental in debunking alleged psychics like Uri Geller and James Hydrick, along with faith healers like Peter Popoff; the group seemed to be a natural fit for plumbing the pseudoscientific depths of audiophilia.

The Foundation was happy to assist and offered to test the cables on-stage as this year’s "Million Dollar Challenge" at the conference. The JREF offers a million dollar bounty for anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal ability under mutually agreed upon test conditions; at least once in the past, the JREF has offered this prize to audiophile cable manufacturers if the cable manufacturers would submit to controlled testing as well.

JREF agreed to the proposed collaboration for several reasons. One is that the foundation regarded the claims being made—that the Ethernet cables can make a "plain as day" difference in audio quality—as pseudoscientific, and therefore worthy of testing. Also, one of the foundational principles of scientific skepticism is consumer protection; the JREF says that this is why it engages in debunking other similar pseudoscientific claims of homeopathy or of "power band" bracelets (a version of which the JREF has tested at past events).

But what precisely would we test for, and how? After some discussion, the folks at the JREF decided that the best thing to do would be to construct what’s called an "A/B/X" listening test. In this type of test, a listener first hears an audio sample through one cable, and then hears the same audio sample through the second cable. The listener is told which cable is being used for both "A" and "B" (even-numbered listening subjects would hear the AudioQuest cable first, while odd-numbered listeners would hear the Amazon cable first). Then, one of the two cables is randomly selected and the same audio sample is played over that cable (the "X"). The listener is then prompted to choose whether the third "X" audio sample was played over cable A or cable B.

Enlarge/ Audiophile-grade "Vodka" Ethernet cables, from AudioQuest. They even have directional indicators!

Lee Hutchinson

The choice to use an A/B/X format was in response to reviews like Lavorgna’s, where the difference in audio quality between a standard and expensive Ethernet cable is repeatedly described using terms like "plain as day." If the difference truly is that dramatic, listeners should be able to easily detect it.

Additionally, the test wasn’t attempting in any way to quantify which cable was producing better audio, since "better" is too subjective to quantify. The test was instead attempting only to determine if subjects could tell any difference between the two.

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Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and gaming/culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and human space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com

485 Reader Comments

I was curious initially to see the testing protocol. Now I'm just disappointed.

The contention that the claims by Lavorgna, Van Es, Darko, etc... are being tested require a testing rig that exceeds their ability to throw darts at it.

The setup allowed for technicalities to interrupt the process.

You have to take all the audiophile concerns and know those support structures, i.e. resistance to the testing setup, out from under one by one.

You have to paint them into a corner where they can't complain about the equipment, the room, the source material. Where all they are left with is the abject failure to discern a meaningful difference.

I hate to be harsh as I've been referenced in the write up but that's where it personally sits for me.

I want to thank ArsTechnia and Lee for starting this ball down the court. It's time to advance it further toward the audiophile net.

Just for curiosity's sake if you did see a test set up so - scientifically monitored by all those who seem to know this (I certainly don't) - and IF it proved that one or more humans could, indeed, discern a difference that exceeds significantly statistical probability, would you accept that?

I'm guessing that the vast majority would not - for the same reasons that audiophiles have their beliefs about their systems.

Personal experience of something that is qualitative - and someone used the example of cuisine and competent chefs examining it - is not always something that can be "proven". A simple scallop may be prepared by dozens of people, tasting different in each case, but can a talented person discern the one made with a hint of {ingredient}? Yes, quite likely and to a degree that exceeds probability.

However, doing the same thing with crappy ingredients, poor oil, temperatures that are too high probably spoils the product to the degree that it is indeterminable.

So it is using off-the-rack computer gear to listen to high quality recordings. On a normal PC the difference between 16/44.1 (CD) and 24/192 is relatively indeterminable. Listen to music from an MP3 player on high quality pieces of gear and it sounds just like what it is: junk music missing most of the information that provides nuance.

Furthermore for this type of ABX test - I think it would best done when there sometimes are differences in some of the samples, e.g. mp3 at 64kbps vs lossless - but without telling the user which cases do that.

That lets you know who was influenced by the belief that there shouldn't be a difference and thus weren't listening for a difference (or people who have damaged hearing)

I think that level of rigorousness is considered unnecessary because the cables claim a plain advantage.

If a simple test can't ID a difference between the cables, then there's no plain advantage.

But if only 1 of 7 people can tell the difference, with 6 straight up saying they can't, then it's pretty plainly not possessed of a plain advantage.

If you want to debunk the claim that there's a plain advantage, I guess you have a point. However, the interesting question is if there COULD be any difference at all, or if this truly falls inside the realm of pseudoscience. In order to settle that question, a greater degree of rigorousness is absolutely required. Even allowing the subjects to pick "I don't know" clearly shows that the test was carried out by people with an agenda.

I can respect that agenda. I too want the magic properties of these cables thoroughly debunked. So please go ahead and do that, instead of the ridiculous farce of a test.

I could buy the idea that there would be some difference if analog audio was passing through the cable. But digital, I don't think so, even more when you consider that ethernet has CRC.

The only thing that could possibly affect this is a ground loop that makes it all the way through and into the analog channel after the DAC on the computer. The obvious fix is to use fiber, not copper, as the cable interconnect - it completely isolates the two components electrically. Of course, using a built-in DAC on a laptop is an audiophile's worst nightmare - there's no TUBES!

Have you seen the one with a FAKE tube that's lit by an LED? I can't find it right now, but I saw one in Fry's a while back. I LOL'd when I realized what I was seeing.

I was curious initially to see the testing protocol. Now I'm just disappointed.

The contention that the claims by Lavorgna, Van Es, Darko, etc... are being tested require a testing rig that exceeds their ability to throw darts at it.

The setup allowed for technicalities to interrupt the process.

You have to take all the audiophile concerns and know those support structures, i.e. resistance to the testing setup, out from under one by one.

You have to paint them into a corner where they can't complain about the equipment, the room, the source material. Where all they are left with is the abject failure to discern a meaningful difference.

I hate to be harsh as I've been referenced in the write up but that's where it personally sits for me.

I want to thank ArsTechnia and Lee for starting this ball down the court. It's time to advance it further toward the audiophile net.

Just for curiosity's sake if you did see a test set up so - scientifically monitored by all those who seem to know this (I certainly don't) - and IF it proved that one or more humans could, indeed, discern a difference that exceeds significantly statistical probability, would you accept that?

I'm guessing that the vast majority would not

I would accept the results and then try to learn why.

There was a case where people could discern high definition audio from redbook. Reliably.

This was at odds to the science of the human ear. When investigated further how these people were able to do it, it was discovered that the speakers were not designed for the frequency in the audio and were creating a distortion within the human hearing range.

When properly designed speakers were used so no distortion was created, no audible difference was detected.

It is problematic to test music with frequencies to high for redbook because speakers are designed for our hearing range, and sending them higher frequencies is out of the spec they are designed for resulting in distortions.

But if the data showed a difference could be detected, the investigation into why is then the next step.

Just for curiosity's sake if you did see a test set up so - scientifically monitored by all those who seem to know this (I certainly don't) - and IF it proved that one or more humans could, indeed, discern a difference that exceeds significantly statistical probability, would you accept that?

I'm a data driven individual. I would go where the data points me.

About a decade ago Wolf at the Part Express Tech Talk forum more than once picked out a particular speaker cable from a field of others.

Remember a designer / engineer can engineer something to sound DIFFERENT and then market that difference in the above scenario.

But since I am a data driven person I know that Ethernet is a spec to be adhered to. My honest belief is that in order for AQ to make a cable to sound 'different' and I'm not taking on 'better' since that is subjective and no right or wrong. That is for them to make specifically an Ethernet cable sound 'different' then they would most likely have to break the specification to do SOMETHING to get a different sound out of a DAC.

Personal experience of something that is qualitative - and someone used the example of cuisine and competent chefs examining it - is not always something that can be "proven". A simple scallop may be prepared by dozens of people, tasting different in each case, but can a talented person discern the one made with a hint of {ingredient}? Yes, quite likely and to a degree that exceeds probability.

However, doing the same thing with crappy ingredients, poor oil, temperatures that are too high probably spoils the product to the degree that it is indeterminable.

You're above is conjecture. What is the QUESTION, what is the CLAIM? In your above we are talking ingredient differentiation. You don't have to use scallops for that. You could use a well baked loaf of sour dough.

So it is using off-the-rack computer gear to listen to high quality recordings. On a normal PC the difference between 16/44.1 (CD) and 24/192 is relatively indeterminable. Listen to music from an MP3 player on high quality pieces of gear and it sounds just like what it is: junk music missing most of the information that provides nuance.

You use an off the rack computer tied to a really killer DAC with Heaphone Pre-Amp. The Emotiva Stealth DC-1 or Oppo HA-1 would be two great examples. There are an enormous amount of positive reviews for both.

First, I have no doubt that for streaming digital audio from a NAS, these cables offer no improvement over any well constructed ethernet cable.

The article does not address the choice to use low-grade integrated audio from a generic laptop rather than a quality 3rd party DAC with an amp. The laptop integrated audio has a lot of background noise.

I'm of two minds regarding this -

On the one hand, trying to detect small changes with a noisy background is very difficult and often impossible - especially with a sampling of 1 (per person). This assumes the noisy background is random.

On the other hand, if there was 'noise' induced from the NAS over the ethernet cable into the laptop and through the DAC to the headphones, you're more likely to notice this using the crappy integrated laptop audio. I for one have heard electrical noise on a laptop's audio output, from hard disks and SSD drives.

Another point I would have liked to see addressed is the cases in which cabling can matter in digital audio transmission. The simple adage that "digital audio is just binary and the cables can't change the data" is false except in cases where the system uses sufficient ECC, re-transmits dropped packets (if applicable) and buffers the data at the receiving end enough to appropriately re-construct the audio clock. In my understanding, real-time transmission of digital audio, such as over SPDIF, can induce jitter into the clock/data and affect the reconstruction of the audio.

^^EDIT: Last paragraph - I mean other cases than this example - other modes of digital audio transmission such as SPDIF. What about MPEG-TS over UDP or multicast? It makes the argument more powerful to say: "yes, there are cases in which cabling can matter in digital audio, but because of X,Y,Z,P,Q streaming a WAV from a NAS over ethernet is not one of them".

Another point I would have liked to see addressed is the cases in which cabling can matter in digital audio transmission. The simple adage that "digital audio is just binary and the cables can't change the data" is false except in cases where the system uses sufficient ECC, re-transmits dropped packets (if applicable) and buffers the data at the receiving end enough to appropriately re-construct the audio clock. In my understanding, real-time transmission of digital audio, such as over SPDIF, can induce jitter into the clock/data and affect the reconstruction of the audio.

Uh, Um, Ethernet isn't realtime. You can not draw a correlate between two vastly different digital signalling systems.

Unfortunately Mr. Lavorgna is missrepresenting what he has said in this post:

"Lee Hutchinson also repeatedly quotes me as saying the differences I heard between various Ethernet cables were "not subtle or slight" and "as plain as day." This, according to Lee, was "The claim being examined..." in Vegas. I'm honored. The problem is, I was clearly saying these "not subtle or slight" and "as plain as day" differences were heard in my system. If I listened through the Ars test setup, Grado RS2e headphones connected to a Dell M2800 laptop, my guess is I'd be hard-pressed to hear the difference between an MP3 and an M16. Details, details. Let the show go on."

Mr. Lavorgna is unfortunately caught out in a bold faced lie in this regard since he is on public record as stating he has hear the difference in all manner of setups.

Including a room full of people at an AQ dog and pony show.

So it wasn't in his system that these statements are originating from.

Sample size only influences quality of statement you can make / strength of claim you can disprove. E.g. if claim were that every morning sun rises at 6 am local time then single observation to contrary suffices to disprove it. Here we have 7 measurements with 1 person who got it right, 1 wrong and 5 heard no difference which I think enough to disprove claim that sound quality improvement with expensive cable is plain to every listener (100%). You could relax 'every' little bit here (90%, 80%, ...) but unfortunately not much lower than 50% if you want reasonably high confidence say 95CL.

For a 95% CL for a single subject in a test, you'd need to run a test at least 10 consecutive times, but probably up to 25 would be better.

For it to be an ABX test you need to force an A or B choice, and use statistics to generate your "I don't know."

And for the whole test to have a 95% CL, you'd need to run a similar number of subjects. But in this case, the more the better.

But if you have an interference prone setup (open backed headpohones in a crowded room) or noisy electonics it'll skew to the 50% mark if the masking interference is constant. It's a way to rig the test either on purpose or by accident.

What burns me, is these guys know perfectly well how to run a good test. They also know the kinds of setups to not skew results. Yet they chose this.

I'd be curious to hear your statistical assumptions because I think they're much weaker* than mine. With that much data I think you can answer far more specific questions than whether there is audio difference "plain as a day" to everyone. Such as whether individual test subjects reliable.

Personally if someone told me something is plain as day I'd expect to see it 25 out of 25 so I wouldn't retest myself 24 additional times. Now if I wanted to quantify degree to which it's different from plain as a day that'd be different matter. I bet Lee's thought process was similar.

EDIT*: before anyone got confused weaker meant in mathematics sense so he assumes less (which can actually enable more robust conclusions).

I was curious initially to see the testing protocol. Now I'm just disappointed.

The contention that the claims by Lavorgna, Van Es, Darko, etc... are being tested require a testing rig that exceeds their ability to throw darts at it.

The setup allowed for technicalities to interrupt the process.

You have to take all the audiophile concerns and know those support structures, i.e. resistance to the testing setup, and knock them out from under the audiophile one by one.

You have to paint them into a corner where they can't complain about the equipment, the room, the source material. Where all they are left with is the abject failure to discern a meaningful difference.

I hate to be harsh as I've been referenced in the write up but that's where it personally sits for me.

I want to thank ArsTechnia and Lee for starting this ball down the court. It's time to advance it further toward the audiophile net.

You could do all that and more, and the paint on the walls wouldn't be the right type, or thickness, or colour.

You really underestimate the investment people get in this stuff. It's like trying to talk someone out of believing in god.

I found this write up very confusing. This test was done line, in front of an audience? And the test subjects were chosen from that audience, after they were told what was being tested? And then the test was halted less than half way through the subjects?

Yeah, that doesn't sound high up on the scientific rigor scale.

Perhaps I missed it in the previous 2 stories leading up to the test, but this was not what I expected. I'd think the test would be more along the lines of set up in the conference main hall way or in a lobby, with just the results presented before an audience. And for the testing, you'd tell each subject to listen to the A/B selections and then answers questions about X without telling them what if any differences there are between A and B.

Of course, if you tell people we're testing these highly dubiously magical claims, and oh BTW we're doing this in front of a skeptical audience that will judge you if you give the wrong answer, yeah, you're going to get a lot 'no difference'. It's not those people aren't being honest, it's that they're being people.

If I grab a carton of milk, take a drink, make a face and say "ew, I think this is spoiled. Here, you try it," well, mostly the other person isn't going to try it. Who wants to drink spoiled milk? But if they do, they're more likely to agree with me than if I had said nothing.

It's not that I think there's any audible differences between the two cables. I'm confident any scientific test would have come to the same results. But the test set up in this case has a lot of holes.

And why stop the test? I can see if you're testing a new drug for some rare disease, and you've lined up 20 patients, and 5 of the first 7 recipients die, yeah, you stop giving any more patients that drug. But for a listening test? Did you have a bus to catch? What's the rush?

Have you seen the one with a FAKE tube that's lit by an LED? I can't find it right now, but I saw one in Fry's a while back. I LOL'd when I realized what I was seeing.

Some companies put LEDs behind tubes (eg. the Korg Electribe MX), because people have been brought up by TV and movies to believe that tubes glow, and would accuse them of being fake if they didn't.

In the case I'm thinking of, it wasn't even close to being a real tube. It was a plastic mockup with LED's inside.

As I browsed around, looking for this, I have also discovered that companies are building solid-state amps and putting real tubes on top... but without connecting them to anything (except to power). So the tubes are nothing but props.

Personally, I can't tell the difference between a tube amp and a solid-state amplifier (except in overdrive conditions), so I will just continue to buy solid-state equipment.

Being the true audiophile I am, I use Wi-Fi so I don't accidentally plug my Ethernet cable in the wrong direction or have to worry about grounding issues.

You should use an ionic air cleaner to get richer sound from your wifi streaming. I got much deeper blacks and clearer tones once I cleaned up the air in living room. Moving to a higher grade air purifier really opened the soundstage and added more warmth to the music. Honestly I could never go back to dirty wifi again.

Another point I would have liked to see addressed is the cases in which cabling can matter in digital audio transmission. The simple adage that "digital audio is just binary and the cables can't change the data" is false except in cases where the system uses sufficient ECC, re-transmits dropped packets (if applicable) and buffers the data at the receiving end enough to appropriately re-construct the audio clock.

There is checksums and retransmission. Bad packets are rebroadcast. The packets are buffered and resequenced. There is no clock issues because the only clock is the receiving clock. The DAC simply pulls samples from the buffer at the prescribed frequency.

If noise is picked up by the ethernet cable between the NAS and the switch, it's possible that the switch puts that noise on it's other ports. In theory changing both cables might make more difference in the amount of noise received by the PC then just changing one.

The laptop itself might also make a total difference. It might be that the dell is just way better in this than a Macbook Pro. In my 10 year old laptop when I listen to the music I can very clearly hear the harddisk access, probably when seeking. Those are real clicks you hear, there is no way you can't hear this. I can also perfectly hear that the fan is on. This is probably an extreme example, but this is why some people will use an audio card that's external to the PC. Modern hardware is probably much better. The stability of the power to the DAC is for instance very important, and it's probably total crap in my laptop. There are other factors that will have an effect of how good it is.

So I think the most likely explanation why some people do hear a difference between the cables is that their laptop's audio system isn't that good and by using better cables they notice less how bad it is.

I'll spend $15 on a pair of cables that are built better with decent ends that won't crack and stiffer jackets, but it's certainly not because I think they sound better. They just last longer if you're plugging, unplugging, have a cable "pulling" on its connector or move around a lot.

Same here. I've bought a few Monster cables, but it was because they were larger gauge, had strong terminations with strain reliefs, and gold-plated connectors. I didn't want them to break or introduce noise because I accidentally pulled on one while replacing or moving something. Cheap aluminum connectors oxidize, and I don't like having to polish raw brass connectors (which are hard to find outside pro audio anyway).

I'd consider myself a budget "audiophile", one of these from the article:

"There are plenty of people who identify as "audiophiles" who are rational, normal, completely not-insane folks and who don’t believe in craziness like Ethernet cables being directional (because they’re not, guys, seriously)."

So it does bother me a bit that Mr. Hutchinson continues to lump cable nuts under the "audiophile" label.

I'll spend $15 on a pair of cables that are built better with decent ends that won't crack and stiffer jackets, but it's certainly not because I think they sound better. They just last longer if you're plugging, unplugging, have a cable "pulling" on its connector or move around a lot.

Same here. I've bought a few Monster cables, but it was because they were larger gauge, had strong terminations with strain reliefs, and gold-plated connectors. I didn't want them to break or introduce noise because I accidentally pulled on one while replacing or moving something. Cheap aluminum connectors oxidize, and I don't like having to polish raw brass connectors (which are hard to find outside pro audio anyway).

Oh yes, this is a big concern. I've had to polish my Ethernet cables, well, never actually. I have 20 year old cables (from 1995!) that still work perfectly. They weren't "premium" cables either.

What is the bitrate of this audio? 192kbps? 358kbps? You can use ancient 10Base-T signaling and have enormous margins on the cable with way more bandwidth than you'll need for the audio streams.

Even at the most extravagant setting I can think of (7+2 channels of raw 96k samples) you're not even pushing a single megabit.

In all honesty, why even bother? Either Ethernet cables on a device can be a way to get signals that can corrupt the analog side into the machine, in which case either the cable is faulty, or the transceiver is faulty (this assumes that it is designed for high quality to start with, of course).

If either are the case, but replacement is unreasonable, opto-isolate.

Digital signaling, and related grounds, can screw with the analog side of things. Interference can come from many sources (I live within shouting distance of several hams, and between that and screwy SMPSes on every circuit, aaarrgh!!!). If it can be prevented from making its way to the analog side (at a low enough intensity for the design's PSRR and CMRR to reject it sufficiently), then that's that.

Verifying that everything I want to be quiet is or isn't, when it may not be obvious, has been the greatest benefit of finally getting a scope (even if it's a cheap used analog 20MHz, and I'm still wrapping my head around some of the features that all the EEs know like the back of their hands ). I've verified some minor differences that I wondered about, wrt whether they were placebo or not (such as a few circuits being extra sensitive to PSU quality, and a couple not caring as long as they have big bypass caps). With the "slow" ripple from PC PSUs, checking out noise rejection quality into the low MHz isn't too hard, either. Being designed by professionals doesn't magically make it an amazing performer, as well.

There are plenty of things that can be real, and it's not always the simple measurements that will find them. So, don't waste time on crap like expensive Ethernet cables. The crazies that buy them aren't going to be satisfied with the ABX testing anyway, and the rest of us know enough about how Ethernet works to realize that it's bogus from the beginning (barring significant design faults; though in such cases, the cost of a cable would not determine compatibility).

Another point I would have liked to see addressed is the cases in which cabling can matter in digital audio transmission. The simple adage that "digital audio is just binary and the cables can't change the data" is false except in cases where the system uses sufficient ECC, re-transmits dropped packets (if applicable) and buffers the data at the receiving end enough to appropriately re-construct the audio clock. In my understanding, real-time transmission of digital audio, such as over SPDIF, can induce jitter into the clock/data and affect the reconstruction of the audio.

Uh, Um, Ethernet isn't realtime. You can not draw a correlate between two vastly different digital signalling systems.

Hence why I said "the cases in which cabling can matter". As in, other cases than this one.

While I don't believe for a second that there would be a discernable difference in the audio quality from the cables, your test methodology is flawed. If you consider only those who attempted a guess, your sample size is only 2, and 50% got it right (which is what you would expect from random chance of course). If you even assume that 50% of those who passed saying they couldn't tell would have randomly guessed correctly, that would only bring the total number of incorrect guesses to 4.

P.S. I bet if someone chose NOT to wear the headphones in the isolation booth they could tell. Not because of improved audio quality, but because I'm betting the expensive cables make a more satisfying click when you are plugging them in.

I just don't understand how this is even a discussion. It can only possibly send data. How can that data sound any better? It can't.

You didn't read the original assertion - that the Ethernet cable gets interference and carries that somehow, the interference causes unwanted noise in the computer playing back the audio. These $10,000 cables supposedly prevent that.

Thing is - I have personally experienced this problem with cheap USB hardware myself, so I know it's possible in theory. However, Ethernet cables don't have a ground connection, so this is highly unlikely on a network cable... and if it was going to happen, using a shielded, grounded cable would make this more likely, not less.

It's obviously cow manure, which is why Ars is all over it like a fly on, well, cow manure.

Audiophiles are like analog film buffs. What they regard as pure is just their own special type of distortion. And I disagree with the contention that:

"There’s also nothing at all wrong with spending tens of thousands of dollars on audio equipment"

At least, Lee, you are spending money learning how to fly a plane. Spending thousands of dollars on audio gear is truly frivolous, and there is nothing worse then frivolous spending.

Why is one hobby better than another? Why do you get to call one person's hobby frivolous and another person's not?

The argument here is not whether the hobby of listening to music is a waste of money (because that's entirely up to personal choice), it's whether or not people with that hobby are being taken advantage by charlatans selling snake oil (an objective and provable possibility).

An objectivist (scientist, engineer, teacher, journalist, etc.) would respond to an unexpected (or "disliked") test result by QUESTIONING the test & confirming that it is either valid or is flawed. If the test proves to be vaiid, an objectivist will realign their concept of reality to match empirical evidence.

Surely the first thing an objectivist would do is invoke the invisible hand of the free market?

*ducks*

Touché! And from a perspective both honest & objective, I can think of few things more beneficial to mankind than the chance to have taken out Ayn in a good 'ol Russian steppes style saber duel. This would be before the dissociation, psychotic & episodic grandiose surreality set in ... before she was published.

Digital is 1's and 0's there is no "loss of quality" unless it is purposefully downgraded using very complicated algorithms.

In fact the data you send over the internet is actually self correcting so IF there is an error and a bit gets lost or flipped while traveling around the world it can be detected and corrected upon arrival.

Somewhat related to this is the belief that Monster cable are so much better than basic Radio Shack cables. When my daughter was in college and for many years I would use plain old 14 gauge lamp cord to connect my speakers to my stereo. I had one set of big buck cables I used as well. Guess what. Neither over the air, tape, CD or vinyl sounded any different using the cord versus the cables. And this was the same on a 90 watt 0.3% THD stereo I bought in 1978 and on a 100 x 5 watt 0.05% THD unit.

If you think Mythbusters is a fair comparison then thank you for illustrating my point. It's a race to the bottom.

This is disappointing on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin.

It is entertainment with science mixed in, just like so many other science shows that have been done in the past.

They do a great job overall and I give them credit for trying to bring a bit of education to those who think "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" is entertainment.

Let me begin for you:

The comment chain was about the relationship between Ars standards of testing and Mythbusters standards. Following that trend - and assuming you read through my comments correctly - you've just suggested the Ars audience is synonymous with the "Keeping up with the Kardashians" audience..